cope with things as they are out die
re I want the car moved out to the lab with the body kept in the boot. How
on earth you tfiink?'
'Done!' Strange held up the great slab diat was his right hand.
'Lewis will arrange it immediately, once he's finished his drink. Si' down,
Doctor. Just give me a minute or two.' He sat back in his chair, beaming
like a benign old uncle.
'Takes you back. Morse, doesn't it?'
'Remember the old poem, sir?
'When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea. ..'
'Yes! Yes, I do,' said Strange gently.
And for a while Sergeant Lewis and Dr Hobson remained silent, as if they knew
they should be treading softly; as if they might be treading on other
people's dreams.
157
chapter thirty-four Sunt lacrimae re rum ct mentem mort aha tangunt
(Always in life are there tears being shed for things, and human suffering
ever touches the heart) (Virgil, Ameid, I, I. 462) As she opened the door,
the recently re-applied blonde dye showed little or no trace of the hair's
brunette inheritance.
'Oh, hullo.' The greeting was less than enthusiastic.
'May I come in?' asked Morse.
Apart from the minimal towel held in front of her body, she was naked: 'Just
wait there a sec I'll just. ..'
She re-closed the door and Morse stood, as she had bidden, on the threshold.
Stood there for a couple of minutes. And when she re-opened the door and
re-appeared, it puzzled him that in such a comparatively long time she had
done little other than to exchange the white towel for an equally minimal
white dressing gown.
They sat opposite each other in the kitchen.
'Drink?' she ventured.
'No. I've had a busy day on the drink.'
'That good or bad?'
'Bit of both.'
'Mind if I have one?'
'Can you wait? Just a minute?'
'It's about Harry, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'He's dead, isn't he?'
'He's been murdered,' said Morse flatly.
Debbie Richardson leaned forward on her elbows, the long fingers with their
crimson nails vertically veiling her features. Then after a while she got to
her feet and turned to the sink, where she moulded her hands into a shallow
receptacle under the cold tap.
As they had spoken at the kitchen table. Morse had observed (how otherwise?
) that whatever else Debbie Richardson had done behind the closed front door
she had certainly not been searching for a bra; and now, as she leaned
forward and held her face in the water, he observed (how otherwise? ) that
she'd had no thought for any knickers either. A provocative prick- teaser,
that was what she was. Morse knew it; had known it when they'd met that once
before. But for the moment his mind was many furlongs from fornication . .
.
He felt fairly sure that she'd been upstairs when he'd rung the bell, for the
light had been on in the front bedroom with the night now drawing in. Yet
she'd answered the door very quickly, almost immediately in fact. Whoever
the caller was, had she wished to give the impression to someone that she'd
been downstairs all the while?
It seemed a bit odd. After all, he could well have been a Jehovah's Witness
or an equally dreaded member of the Mormons or a charity-worker bearing an
envelope. Quite certainly though she hadn't rushed down the stairs from a
bath, since about her was none of that freshly scented aura of a woman
recently risen from her toilet.
Rather perhaps (although Morse was no connoisseur in such matters) it was the
musky odour of sex that lingered around her.
Whilst she had stood silently at the sink, he had strained his ears as acutely
as any astronomer waiting for the faintest bleep from outer space. But of
any other presence in the house the re had been no sound at all; no sight at
all either, except for the two unwashed wine glasses that stood on the
draining board, a heel-tap of red in each of them. And Morse guessed 59
that Debbie Richardson would never have taken the slightest risk of Claret
and intercourse that day with anyone unless it were with Harry Repp. And it
